


No gods, no masters

by afterearth



Category: Borderlands (Video Games)
Genre: F/M, False Identity, Multi, Not Canon Compliant, Other, Robot/Human Relationships, artificial intelligence/human relationship, messing with the timeline and angel's age, more characters may be listed as this goes on, takes place after the pre-sequel, wherein our hero makes a bad situation worse because he wants to get back at the antagonist
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-19
Updated: 2020-11-14
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:00:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,776
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27554998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/afterearth/pseuds/afterearth
Summary: Tim saves Felicity, but it doesn’t really change anything. And then Felicity finds The Girl. Helping her would mean risking the wrath of Handsome Jack and getting the attention of anyone else in the borderlands who would want to harness the power of a Siren.But what the hell. He was already in a speeding car with the brakes cut. Might as well floor it all the way. [A rescue Angel AU featuring Tim and Felicity and Tim/Felicity, and a kid!Angel]
Relationships: Angel & Felicity (Borderlands), Angel & Handsome Jack (Borderlands), Angel & Timothy Lawrence, Felicity/Timothy Lawrence, Handsome Jack & Timothy Lawrence
Comments: 2
Kudos: 5





	No gods, no masters

“Dad - er - Jack, sir?” The kid’s voice was hushed, afraid. 

“Tim, you’re covered in blood,” Felicity hissed into his ear piece. “Oh dear we should have cleaned up before we came for the poor dear...but...my God, what has he been doing to her?” 

The girl was hooked up to various cords and cables imprisoning her in a chair, obviously something off-market, something made by a homemade inventor. But that wasn’t the issue. The issue was the IV of purple liquid next to her. 

Tim rocked between Timothy Lawrence - being a horrified, timid man witnessing a terrible situation and having it reflect on his actions or lack thereof - and his training as Jack the Vault Hunter and fluctuated between the two. Maybe if he played it right he wouldn’t have to be Handsome Jack. Jack hadn’t always been a total psychopath, right? 

“Hey kiddo,” he said, taking a confident step forward. But only one. “Things have - things are different. Plans’ve changed.” He fumbled with the rhythm of Jack’s speech between the balance of being Jack-the-father and Handsome Jack. 

The girl was eight, or nine, or ten. He couldn’t recall her exact age. She stared at him. Her toes curled. “Okay…” 

“We gotta go, kiddo. Gotta go now.” 

“Where?” she asked. 

Felicity, concealing her signal from the girl and her powers, spoke up in Tim’s ear. “We can’t leave the planet without going through Hyperion systems. All DNA linkups belonged to Atlas and Hyperion, courtesy of Jack as of sixteen hours ago, now owns Atlas holdings and its affiliated branches. We can’t leave Pandora.” 

He pressed a hand to the ear piece. The kid watched, silent. “For how long?” he asked Felicity, eyes still on the girl. Hiding on Pandora hadn’t been the plan. Being near Elpis, near Hyperion, near Jack, in the _borderlands_ , hadn’t been a part of any of it. They were supposed to get the hell away. Back to planets that fell under Galactic Law, or what passed for law out there. They could still leave and maybe make it, or at least not draw as much attention to themselves. They didn’t have to take the girl. She was Jack’s daughter - how much could he hurt her? Yet, Tim’s eyes couldn’t help but trace the cables, the restraints, the defunct satellite in the corner of the room. 

“I’m afraid I can’t hazard a specific guess. But we can’t leave her here. He will destroy her if we do. Just like he tried to destroy me.” Felicity’s voice wavered between worry and rage, and then it softened suddenly. “You didn’t let him, Tim. You trusted me and saved me. Jack is no hero. But you  _ are _ . I won’t abandon you in this, I promise.”

Tim half-hated that Felicity did that. Tried to make him out to be a hero when he was just a man riddled with debt, a coward striking out from the dark, stealing a little girl from her father. But Felicity hadn’t ever lied to him. She’d never done anything really for her own benefit, except to survive. They were in this together, had been since he’d defied Jack and helped her hide away from Gladstone’s extraction. 

They’d just been lucky when Jack had assumed Gladstone had been the mole after the shoddy replica Felicity had cobbled together in the little time she’d had failed to impress when it went live in the Constructor bot. It had been basic and obeyed orders just fine, but had no grasp of nuance, of strategy. 

Jack had thought it had been on purpose. Gladstone and the other scientists paid the price for Tim’s and Felicity’s duplicity. Their screams and begging once featured in his nightmares, but now he could scarcely recall what he’d felt in that moment. 

He was a changed man since his intern days. Felicity was the first good thing he’d done since he went into Jack’s employ, the first really brave thing he’d  _ ever  _ done. Completely independent of the actions Jack demanded. Felicity believed he was a good man. He wasn’t, but he could try for her. She  _ knew  _ what had happened, she understood, and _ she still trusted him _ . He had to try to be a good man. Which meant he couldn't leave the kid, couldn't even consider it. _Goddamn it_. 

He approached the kid slowly. “Feel like going on a field trip?” 

The kid’s eyes slid left to right and back before settling on him. “Are you - am I going in another chair?” 

He looked at the IV drip of eridium in her arm, the cables coiled around her tiny body like snakes, the emptiness of the room, the illusion of poverty concealing Jack’s superhero rise to fame and power, and he thought of Jack’s expansive office, of his luxuries and the interns and secretaries he was fucking and Tim - 

It made his ears ring. 

“Tim your heart rate jumped dangerously, are you -” Felicity’s soothing voice washed over him but something in him rose, hot and quick. A little vicious. Like being in the middle of a gunfight and having to keep up with killers and mercenaries and things programmed for war. It was like digging deep for adrenaline and seeking out the ugliness in him he saw reflected in all the other faces he’d fought. 

“No more chairs,” he said abruptly. Loudly. The kid flinched and Felicity’s voice hushed. “I promise, kiddo. No more chairs. Something went sideways and we gotta get a move on, like ten minutes ago.” 

The kid gulped. “I’m sorry - I - I can try to fix it?” 

She thought it was her fault. She didn’t even know what was wrong and she thought it was her fault. Her small hands balled into fists on the arm rests.

He felt too hot, too cold. His gun hand flexed. 

Tim was already shaking his head and he drew on the only good parental figure he could recall - a dad from a late night sitcom - and tried to reconcile it with Jack’s personality. Before he went crazy. He went to one knee in front of the chair. “It wasn’t your fault, kiddo. I - we don’t have time right now, but I’ll explain everything, okay? But we have to go. Can you…” How the hell was he supposed to ask her to disengage herself from...whatever the hell she was hooked up to? Wasn’t Jack supposed to know how to do it? He couldn’t tell her now that he wasn’t her father - she’d alert Jack with an emergency beacon or something and they’d be screwed.

_ Crap _ . 

“Remove the IV first, Tim. Delicately. I know Siren physiology is more forgiving with the stuff, but she’s just a child. We don’t know if they can become addicted to it or if there’s adverse effects that aren't documented.” Felicity in his ear, with a solution as always. Thank God for Felicity. 

Tim moved slowly because the kid watched him like a cornered animal, small and helpless. Beaten and scared. Rage, that alien emotion that resided in the background almost constantly since Elpis, swelled in him and he wondered if it was Timothy’s rage or Jack’s. Looking back, he couldn’t ever recall _Timothy_ being so angry. Not until he had Jack’s  _ face _ , his  _ voice _ , his  _ genes _ . 

Once upon a time, he'd kept Felicity from going rampant. He had to trust she’d do the same for him. 

The kid never flinched. Purple drops spilled from her arm, from the IV tap. 

Felicity in his ear again: “Now...along the back...we have to disengage her from the uplink connection. He just treated her like a piece of equipment. Oh, Tim, this poor, poor girl.” 

He reached for the cable and the kid winced, biting her lip. “It’s okay.” Less Jack, but not really Timothy. Timothy wouldn’t have saved Felicity. Timothy wouldn’t have betrayed his employer and put an enormous target on his back by escaping. He wouldn’t have let Felicity invade the chip in the back of his neck and disable the tracker, and he wouldn’t have dug it out with a knife in the office bathroom at Helios. He wouldn’t have faked his own death with a faulty pod crash report. He wouldn’t be here, stealing from Handsome Jack, stealing his daughter and lying to her about his identity.

He guessed it didn’t matter who he was or who he was becoming. To be honest, it hadn't mattered for a long while.

The uplink slid from the modified port in the back of her neck. 

“Ow,” she whispered softly. 

“Okay?” He didn’t want to hurt her. 

She nodded slowly. 

“Next, disable the restraints. After that, we can shut the power down and the rest should be simple, unless he has more unpleasant surprises.” Felicity clucked over the marks from the restraints on the girl’s wrists, on the irritated, flushed skin surrounding the modified ports. It was easy after that though, so unlike Jack’s plans. 

The kid sat still in her chair. She was waiting for permission to leave the chair. 

“Come on,” Tim said. He ducked his head around the hidden door’s frame around the compound’s entrance, but he couldn’t hear anyone or anything. It was fine. They were fine. They still had time, Felicity still had control of the facility, and the kid didn’t realize anything, Jack didn’t know -

“Dad,” a tiny voice said behind him. “I don’t think I can stand on my own. Please, can you - can you help me up?” 

Tim wrenched around to give her a look and she must have taken it negatively, cringing from him. 

“Tim!” Felicity reproached. “I can’t scan her without syncing to her credentials and I don’t believe she’d welcome an intrusion. I’m still blocking her full access to the prison. But judging by the state Jack kept her in...I’d assume natural weakness and fatigue and some early signs of muscle atrophy. I don’t know how often he let her out.” 

“Alrighty, kiddo. Come on.” He felt awkward now. He had to carry her, then. That was fine. Running for your life and killing a lot of people and things all the time built up muscle strength and stamina, but this was - 

“Tim. I don’t know how much longer I can block Helios. Jack just pinged her. We  _ must  _ leave.” 

“Goddamn it,” Tim cursed. He reached out and took care, lifting her under her arms. He was unsure how to carry her. The kid reached out like it was natural, and maybe once it had been, for his neck and looped her arms around him. Her weight rested on his shoulders, waist, his right hip. 

“Okay. I’m ready,” she said, casting a look at a stuffed animal. 

On a whim, Tim swiped it and pushed it into her hands. “Okay, kiddo. Let’s blow this joint.” 

Felicity filled the silence between them by thinking aloud. A habit she’d developed during their time together. He couldn’t always respond, but it made things less lonely. Less oppressive. “The east coast is too flooded with Atlas, and now by extension, Hyperion. Locating settlements…” 

Tim jogged to the Runner, eyes on the sky. Looking for any moonshots from Helios. Maybe not all the Loader bots were combat ready, but if there were any and Jack suspected something was wrong with Angel, Tim didn’t doubt he’d send down the prototypes. The Fast Travel next to the compound’s entrance was scrambled. Felicity was still blocking it. It sparked, displaying orange lettering. Tim slid down the embankment and the kid gasped in his ear, arms squeezing around his neck. 

They were running out of time. The turrets and shields were still offline. But it was all temporary. Felicity couldn’t keep it up for much longer, she’d stressed that she could be tracked after this. Their one advantage was that Felicity came from Dahl. The dumb A.I. she’d patched together for the Constructor bot barely held anything that reflected her but it would be enough to recognize patterns. Felicity wasn’t written in Hyperphire. 

In doing this rescue mission, they were forfeiting their advantage. 

Jack would recognize her signature after this. Anyone working in programming would. Hopefully they’d blame Dahl, but it wouldn’t matter. Their advantage was gone and they only had one shot at this, at everything. If Felicity or he weren’t careful and they popped up on Hyperion radar after this - well Jack wasn’t stupid. He’d know. He’d find out the truth and then he’d find them.

“Everything down here is too noticeable. Hmmm...It’ll take longer to reach, but head northwest. I found something aaannnd setting a waypoint. The Southern Shelf; a polar region with lots of ice, but minimal corporate interests and too good - no Atlas holdings. Hyperion hasn’t set foot there. There’s a charming little hamlet called Liar’s Berg. I suppose there’s no accounting for taste on this planet.” 

“How far is it?” he asked, breathing through his nose while he moved. 

“Dad?” the kid asked quietly. 

“On the line with someone, kiddo,” he said without missing a beat. 

The kid pressed her face into his neck. 

Felicity spoke. “By Runner, if we make minimal stops and avoid Hyperion tech, it would almost be two cycles. We’d have to make the rest of the way by ship, and that’ll be another cycle. I know it’s not terribly close, but it is safer. Insofar as that goes here.”

The Runner was still warm, the blazing Pandoran sun beating down on them. The kid was really pale. He had nothing for her except a poncho. He settled her on the floor in the space where supplies would’ve sat and covered her quickly. “Keep that on, don’t want you withering away under the sun, mmkay?” 

The kid let him go reluctantly, gripping the fabric around her. “Okay, Dad.” 

“Tim...I realize you aren’t really Angel’s father, but would it be so bad to give her a little affection? She’s starved for it. But I suppose she may not appreciate it when we tell her the truth.” Felicity’s tone dipped unhappily, and honestly? Yeah, it sucked trying to be Jack without being Jack and lying to  _ Jack’s kid  _ about it. 

“Get some rest, Angel. We’ve got a long drive.” 

She gave a half-smile, but curled up and Tim fishtailed away from the rickety shelter that concealed the high-tech terror of a new age. 

“Rerouting our path. I don’t want us to pass any blasted cameras or witnesses. We need some time to think...and a little healing wouldn’t be remiss.” 

Tim looked, but the girl was passed out, snoozing beneath the poncho. Her head rested on his knee. “Yeah. I wouldn’t say no to some R and R. We need supplies before we get there though.” 

“Oh - yes. Hm. There’s a rest stop coming up in an hour...finding the fastest route...okay. Make a left before the bandit encampment coming up. We’ll follow a little backroad all the way. Their commerce traffic is primarily fuel, basic MRE rations, and water. Not fancy, by any means, but I suppose we can’t be picky.” She sounded very much like she wanted to be, though. 

Tim didn’t bother fighting a little grin. “High standards?” 

“Well, high standards on your behalf. But yes, I suppose. You deserve far more than what you’ve been reduced to. We both do. Now, including Angel, we  _ all  _ do.” 

“I uh...dunno what to feed her.” 

“She’s not a Tork, Tim,” Felicity laughed. 

“No, I mean...kids...uh kids need certain things? Right?” Growing bodies and brains and all that. His own mom hadn't been really invested in his health growing up, so he doubted he'd have any idea what a kid would need. Especially a Siren kid - oh _God_ what the hell was he doing? He and Felicity could've just left Pandora, see you never Jack, they could've been home free, nary a care in the whole galaxy. What the hell were they doing? 

“ _ Oh _ . I’ll...have a looksie. Maybe we’ll be able to scrounge something up for the darling?” Felicity bumbled a little, apparently charmed by the kid already. 

The roar of the Runner’s engine bounced off the dusty flats, against the jagged rocks of the cliff-faces, and the kid didn’t wake up. Tim once prodded her shoulder to check to see if she was still breathing, a paranoid intrusive thought that taking her from her chair and eridium had worse effects than they’d thought. She’d just murmured in her sleep and burrowed further into the poncho.

“She has your eyes,” Felicity commented softly. 

“Jack’s eyes,” Tim corrected. Timothy Lawrence had had two blue eyes. The green was new, but it wasn’t as though he could change his face now. On Pandora, it would likely get him killed looking for a doctor to even attempt it out here. Not to mention...Felicity disabled the tracker and he removed the bomb’s remote trigger in his neck. He couldn’t remove the local trigger. He couldn’t disable the bomb. No one could. Even attempting to do it, it’d just blow his head off as a precaution. 

“What the hell are we going to do when Jack starts putting his face on everything?” His voice was a little harsh, a little angry. They shouldn't have taken the girl. They shouldn't even still _be_ here.

“I have an idea. He wears his mask to hide that Vault scar. If I can get into Hyperion’s Requisitions, I can order a supply of masks and have them sent here.” 

“What the hell is that gonna do, babe?” 

“If we can spread them around, have them made available, don’t you think people would wear them? It can be, I don’t know, part of Hyperion’s PR outreach program to be family friendly. Besides, isn’t that something he’d do? Paste his face everywhere and sell it as second-bests, get to be everyone’s favorite hero. And if you walk around with one...well. Who’s to say what you really look like.” 

It wasn’t great, but what else could they do? 

“Are you gonna uh make them with that synthetic skin too?” 

“Of course. We have to make it believable.”

A mask over a mask. Awesome. Fantastic. God he hated his life. 

“How do we tell her?” He jerked his head at the sleeping form of the kid. 

“That, I don’t know. I don’t know, Tim. Would she still trust us knowing the truth?” Felicity’s tone was doubtful now, hesitant. 

“I dunno. But we can’t just not tell her.” 

Couldn’t they though? Pass it off that some guy wearing her father’s face had taken over and was the villain and Tim was really Jack, on the run from this other guy pretending to be him, having stolen his identity? Jack had stolen Tim’s, after all. It sounded fair if he took Jack’s. More than just compensation for all the crazy shit Jack had convinced him to do. 

“We could just...not tell her.” As soon as the words were out, Tim felt a flare of elation. Some comeuppance for Jack. Timothy Lawrence no longer existed. Fin. The end. Period. Timothy might be dead, forever and buried, but hell - Jack was still alive. Handsome Jack hadn't done a goddamn thing in the hunt for the Vault, but _Jack_ , he, him, had. The face people placed to the hero was him anyway. Why the hell not make it reality? Why not make Handsome Jack the imposter?

“Not...tell her?” Felicity worked out his meaning. “How do you propose we do that, Tim? He’s up there already -”

“Just hear me out, alright? Everyone in Hyperion knows Jack saved Elpis. They think he stopped the Lost Legion. They think he opened the Vault. He’s good for profits. Someone comes in, steals his thunder and then steals his identity so no one can argue. And he - I - have to run. Have to flee. They know about Angel now, he’d be worried about what they’d do right? Maybe it’d shake him up enough to realize what the hell he’s been doing?” 

It sounded fucking crazy, honestly. But Tim had done crazier.  _ He became a Vault Hunter because he had student loans _ . 

“There are people who know he had a body-double, Tim." 

"People die all the time out here, babe. Who's to say Jack wasn't the one out there risking his neck while his body-double played pretend-boss? Nobody really knows him. Moxxi, but she tried to have all of us killed. Lilith, but she only caused the scar and if you get me a mask...who the hell will know? Will they care enough to come after us?" 

It was Pandora. They wouldn't. They had other concerns. Like Atlas holdouts, the reemergence of Dahl, rumblings of Hyperion in the near future, Vladof and Maliwan coming out of the shadows for the prize, Jakobs switching ownership faster than you could blink...Pandora and Elpis had a hell of a lot more on their minds than some guy who maybe might be the one guy who owned Hyperion. But who the hell would believe Handsome Jack would slum it down here with a child in tow? 

"So Jack, the one on Helios, is the imposter.” 

“That’s right. He can’t see much anymore without his kid, right?” 

“Yes,” she drew the word out. “But you'd have stay as Jack. Her actual father. Why conceal the truth?” 

“Would she stay with some guy not her father?” Even if he wouldn’t keep her imprisoned, at the end of the day, Jack was her real father. Why would she trust some guy wearing his face?

Felicity went quiet. They both had a similar scenario in mind. Angel being told the truth and either lashing out with her powers, or accepting the situation on the surface before contacting Jack. Both ended with them dead and Angel a prisoner again. 

“He’s the imposter who took Jack’s -  _ your  _ identity to gain custody of Angel and inherit Hyperion and your achievements. You are  _ Jack _ trying to turn over a new leaf. You’ve realized the error of your ways and want to make amends. This is insane, I hope you realize?” 

“Do you have any brighter ideas?” Tim knew it was crazy. 

“I think, in the endeavor of trying to turn over a new leaf, you shouldn’t answer to the name Jack.” 

“Not my legal name,” Tim said, shutting down that line of thought. If he had to play Jack, whatever amalgamation existed now, Timothy Lawrence had to stay dead. And something sat wrong in the idea of preserving Tim as the fake identity. “What was Jack’s name before he changed it?” 

“It was John.” 

Tim’s hands flexed on the steering wheel, gunning the boost. John. 


End file.
